


The Journalist And The Magician

by delicious-irony (deliciousirony)



Series: Secret Santa Exchanges [5]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: 2-person-love-triangle, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Identity Reveal, M/M, Merthur Gift Exchange, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-20
Updated: 2017-01-20
Packaged: 2018-09-18 19:14:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9399044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deliciousirony/pseuds/delicious-irony
Summary: Prompt fill for the Merlin Secret Santa Exchange: Arthur is the son of the head of police, Uther, who's trying to bring down the vigilantes that he believes plague his city. Merlin is working for Arthur but is one of said vigilantes.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [YourAverageBookworm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/YourAverageBookworm/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy it!

The Magician scowled at him from the other side of the gap between the houses. Arthur kept his eyes trained on the man lest he disappear like so many times before, between one blink and the other. 

 

 

The evening started out much like any of Arthur’s typical Friday evenings. As usual, he stayed a bit longer at work than he should have, finishing an article for the Sunday edition of the Camelot Herald, and wrecking his brain how he could possibly manage to get a better photo to go with it. Merlin had promised to get some for him, but as usual, his personal assistant had managed to fail spectacularly. How was Arthur, the Herald’s star journalist, supposed to publish a serious expose on the dichotomy of good and evil and how this concerned Camelot’s very own superhero/vigilante-menace, when the only image he had got to go with it that showed the man as more than a questionable blur, was a selfie with Merlin in the foreground, smiling a big goofy smile and giving a thumbs-up? There was no chance of cutting Merlin out of the picture either! How the hell had nobody managed to ever get a clear shot of the guy?! Magic was the only explanation, really. The guy was doing _something_. 

And then, after weeks of whining and growing desperation, Merlin had offered to ask the guy. Because apparently, Merlin knew the chap. _Merlin_ of all people. Because apparently, he had helped Merlin save a cat once. And apparently, they had started talking. Merlin swore that he had no idea who was hiding under the mask, though. He couldn’t contact the vigilante directly either, but he could get word to him about wanting to meet him.

Merlin was so proud when he showed Arthur the product of his labours of practically chasing the Magician for a week. Arthur exploded a little bit and screamed at Merlin how he could be such an asinine idiot, that he really had enough of him and his hare-brained incompetence, and to stay out of his sight unless he managed to get Arthur a better picture. When Arthur saw Merlin’s stricken face he felt slightly bad, but then his father called to remind Arthur of the police’s Christmas party he was to attend that evening and by the time that exceedingly polite call had finished, Merlin had slipped from the office and subsequently from Arthur’s mind. He would see him later at the penthouse anyway, when he’d have to assist Arthur with getting ready for the party.

However, upon arrival at the penthouse, Arthur was met with unlit rooms and a serene silence that spoke clearly of Merlin’s absence. The idiot was supposed to be here and help him dress! Fuming, Arthur promised himself that Merlin would be cleaning and waxing Arthur’s car this weekend. Where the hell was he anyway? Arthur tried phoning him, but there was no answer. He buzzed the concierge and had him check for Merlin. His idiot of a PA had a room in the housekeeping wing of the building. Arthur had insisted Merlin move there, because of what use was a PA if they weren’t immediately available 24/7 to take care of Arthur’s business? Before Merlin had been living with his uncle, but his uncle lived on the other side of city, close to the Botanical Gardens where he worked. Merlin had not been happy, but then, Merlin should be happy to have landed a job like this, albeit that it had been Uther, who had given him the job and hoisted a personal assistant on Arthur in the first place. 

It had been a truly unlucky coincidence, that. The youngest journalist to ever do so, Arthur had won a Pulitzer for his piece “Knights of Camelot VS Magical Insurgence: 48h With Camelot’s Special Forces Police”. On the plus side, this had apparently finally somewhat reconciled Uther with Arthur’s career choice, although Arthur had given up on ever not being told that he should have followed in his father’s footsteps as the head of police. Uther had told his son very clearly that the biggest plus to Arthur having suddenly become the rising shooting-star of journalism was that they now had a much better PR platform for the fight against the vigilantes plaguing the city. Morgana had pitched a fit when she had heard that, telling Uther that the only thing those people did was keeping the city safe. Arthur, somewhat of two hearts and two minds on the matter, had kept his thoughts to himself. 

In any case, a few weeks later, there had been a pompous ceremony honouring the city’s greatest sons (“And daughters!” Morgana had growled), which had taken place at the Botanical Gardens, where Merlin moonlighted as a waiter. Nepotism, Arthur was convinced by now, seeing what a clumsy oaf Merlin was. Still, by fortunate-through-circumstances clumsiness or sheer luck, when one of Uther’s enemies had tried to kill Arthur at the banquet, Merlin had knocked Arthur out of harm’s way. Uther, in a fit of misplaced gratitude - and likely while firmly on the drunk side of tipsy - had rewarded Merlin with a position as Arthur’s personal assistant, saying that it was also a reward for Arthur’s achievements. Being a hot-shot investigative journalist at the city’s most important newspaper warranted having someone to take care of all the pesky, less momentous every-day tasks. 

Tasks, which Merlin seemed to have no interest in fulfilling this evening. Or, indeed, most of the time. Arthur had no idea why he had not fired Merlin already. Well, he had _some_ ideas, but those he usually avoided thinking about as well as he could. They usually revolved around considering Merlin more his best friend than his employee, which definitely would not do. Also, punishing Merlin was so much more fun than simply firing him. 

“Why don’t you simply fire him if he’s such a nuisance to work with?” Morgana asked from where she lounged on the sofa, having helped herself to a generous tumbler of Arthur’s favourite whiskey. She had swept into Arthur’s home half an hour earlier, ranting that Uther had made her pick him up because Arthur apparently wasn’t to be trusted to actually show up to these functions on his own, especially not on time.

It was a question Morgana asked with pernicious regularity and with a deviously amused glint in her eyes. Arthur knew why he had kept the idiot around, if he was honest, but he was not going to be honest with Morgana. Not about how he maybe possibly had something of a teeny-tiny very annoying blushing-like-a-teenager crush on his clot of a PA and more importantly, his best friend. Not that his sister would not support him, but she would never let him live it down, not with how he kept railing against his assistant. And hell if he’d ever tell Merlin. Merlin probably wouldn’t let him live it down either. And, on top of that, while Merlin was loyal to a fault and kept telling Arthur how much he believed in him and that he would make the world a better place by writing eye-opening articles and one day becoming an ambassador for UNICEF or prime minister or god knows what else, he had never ever even hinted at Arthur becoming anything more… personal with regard to Merlin. To be fair, Arthur had never even called Merlin a friend to his face, let alone his best friend, and Arthur’s initial attempts to get rid of Merlin had certainly not helped Merlin develop any regard for Arthur beyond those of duty.

So, things were complicated. The appearance of the city’s own vigilante had, however, managed to throw Arthur’s already overtaxed emotional landscape into even further disarray. The Magician was cocky and confident and from what Arthur had been able to observe, one of the kindest people he had ever met, apart from Merlin, of course. Nobody was a genuinely kinder person than Merlin, even if Merlin was an idiot and not helping the city deal with magical threats while dressed like Tuxedo Mask. Not that Arthur knew who Tuxedo Mask was, and he had definitely not had a massive crush on him when he had not at all seen any series or manga where he might appear whatsoever, ever. It was the mask, Arthur decided, it was the mask that got to him. That the Magician was, in total, rather easy on the eyes did not help Arthur at all either. 

Also, there had been that one time when the Magician had helped Arthur escape from the exploding server farm he had been investigating, and Arthur, drunk on the adrenaline of having it made out alive and of feeling the Magician’s lean body pressed against his side, had kissed him. In- and extensively, on the mouth. And Arthur was reasonably sure that the Magician had kissed Arthur back before he had shoved him away. And seeing as the guy was apparently friends with Merlin, he had to have told his PA, because Merlin alternately didn’t look at Arthur and blushed when he was looking at Arthur for the entire next two weeks. Arthur could see how kissing somebody else would not have improved his cards with Merlin, hypothetically of course, if Merlin had any sort of interest, which he obviously didn’t have, which was why possibly having been kissed back by the Magician was such an exhilarating thing in the first place. 

Stewing in a soap opera of his own making - because of _course_ Arthur had to go and first kind of maybe possibly fall in love with his oblivious dork of a PA, and then he had to go and start lusting after the vigilante superhero magician his father was hell-bent on catching, throwing into jail and, in general, to make an example of - Arthur assembled his own evening clothes, got himself dressed, and finally lead Morgana down to the waiting car, all the while wondering where Merlin had gone off to. By the time they arrived at the city hall, Arthur’s lip felt as if it had been chewed through. Morgana was very loudly not saying anything. Arthur was not sure he was grateful for that, but he appreciated the time to worry about where Merlin was. There was no answer to his texts and his calls went straight to voicemail.

There was finger food and cocktails and waiters in starched white shirts and pristine jackets offering champagne flutes on polished silver trays. An hour of mingling and small-talk and shaking hands and possible one or two flutes of bubbly too many, Arthur took his place on the right side of the stage, and listened to first the mayor, then his father, and then three more highly important old men blabber on about the safety of the city and the Uther’s great work. 

As was to be expected, an no amount of precautions had been able to prevent it, there was a small matter of three villains, dressed in ridiculous costumes gleaming in the primary colours, crashing the party and angling for the mayor’s and Uther’s death. Why did most villains have such a distorted sense of fashion? In comparison, the Magician had a classic costume too, and while still somewhat cliche, it was classy. And gave Arthur weak knees. The disco balls currently threatening his father with a painful death only gave Arthur sore eyes. The villains’ demands were, naturally, refused, prompting them to continue with their quest of revenge. Things got a little hairy then, and, for the first time that evening, Arthur was happy about Merlin’s absence. He was busy defending himself - journalist or not, growing up under Uther had left its marks - and Arthur was afraid he might not have been able to keep Merlin safe. Especially when a flood of the villains goons poured in through the high gallery windows, dragging a reluctant but compliant dragon in with them.

Things did indeed look none too good at that moment, and Arthur soon found himself in the undesirable position of first, not being able to say good-bye to Merlin, and second, not being able to tell Merlin that he had not meant what he had said that afternoon. Come to think of it, now that he was faced with the very real chance of never being able to do it, Arthur realised he felt rather sorry for not having let Merlin know that he saw him not just as an idiot, but in fact as a friend, and maybe as even more than that. In a rare moment of epiphanic clarity, it occurred to Arthur that his constantly calling Merlin an idiot might not have been received in its intended sense of an endearment, because that’s what it had kind of become after the first three or four months, but rather as a constant slew of insults. An insight that made Arthur feel all the more bitter about what was shaping up to be his final moments and his inability to set things straight with Merlin.

At that moment, like a knight in shining armour, or rather, a magician with a billowy cape, the Magician swept in and saved Arthur, just when he was about to be hit with some sort of power ball spell - it looked like it crackled, more than burned, so after years of experience being attacked by that sort of thing Arthur was reasonably sure that it was not magical fire but something else. The magician dealt with the villains and their goons by basically simply freezing them in place, ready to be picked off and arrested one by one by the police. The Magician took off the dragon’s collar and told the beast to beat it, and to Arthur’s immeasurable disbelief the giant winged lizard obeyed. The Magician disappeared in the mayhem as always, but this time Arthur had been prepared for it and, silently, like a great cat stalking its prey, he followed the other man out trough one of the small service doors in the back. 

 

 

The Magician scowled at him from the other side of the gap between the houses. The narrow alley below looked empty and dark. Arthur kept his eyes trained on the man lest he disappear like so many times before, between one blink and the other. 

“What do you want?” the Magician bit out.

That was an excellent question.

“Have you seen my assistant?” Arthur asked. This was not the question he had planned on asking, but seeing as he had sent Merlin off to find the person now in front of Arthur…

The Magician stiffened. Arthur noticed.

“No.” 

“No, you haven’t seen him, or no, you haven’t had any contact at all?”

The Magician’s scowl grew. 

“I know that you told him to get a better picture of me or to get lost, and since I can’t let him have a better picture, seeing as your father has this thing about hunting me down, I’m assuming your PA has accepted being sacked and is cleaning out his room.”

“What?! I didn’t sack him!” Arthur protested. Could Merlin have misunderstood him? It would explain his absence this evening. Arthur blanched. “I…”

“Don’t worry, I think he’s finally understood what an idiot he’s been the last couple of years, so it’s probably better for him this way anyway,” the Magician quipped. 

“He’s not an idiot!” 

“That’s the part you take issue with? You call him an idiot all the time!” 

“When I say it…!” Arthur huffed. The Magician’s eyebrows moved heavenward. In for a penny, in for a pound. “I don’t mean it that way.”

The Magician looked doubtful.

“Anyway,” Arthur soldiered on, “I’ve been trying to reach him for hours, I was worried. I didn’t mean what I said earlier. Please, if you can get a hold of him. Just tell him to call me?”

The Magician stayed silent. Arthur was beginning to sweat as the moments stretched. Suddenly this felt like a much more decisive moment than he would ever have expected. 

“Why?” the Magician finally asked. 

“Why what,” Arthur echoed like a reflex. 

The other man huffed. “Why would you want me to contact _him_ for _you_? After you basically sent him packing for not bringing a photo of yours truly,” he pointed out. “And after you kissed _me._ ” 

“I,” Arthur started, but did not know how to go on. This was not working the way he had hoped it would. 

“If you could choose right now between your PA and me, who would you pick?” the Magician continued, a strained sort of curiosity in his voice. “Or rather, if I allowed you to take a picture of me now, but Merlin would be gone by the time you finished, what would you do?”

Arthur was only staring at him, and after a moment the man shrugged and obviously took Arthur’s silence as the natural end of the conversation.

“Wait!” Arthur rushed, finally managing to get his thoughts at least into some semblance of order. “Why do you ask? Would you really allow me to take a picture?”

“Of course that’s the only thing you’d get out of that sentence.”

“No, it isn’t. If getting your picture means losing Merlin, then I wouldn’t want it, but I can’t really see the connection.”

“I’m glad to hear that, but I’m sure you can see all the reasons I can’t let you have a picture anyway. You’d publish it and basically hand me over to Uther the moment he gets his hands on the paper.”

“I would not rat you out!”

“God, you’re dense… Lovely that you wouldn’t, but the picture would, facial recognition, scanning bone structure and all that; heard of it?”

Arthur sighed. The Magician was not wrong. Those were issues, nowadays. Not in the good old days, when the first grand superheros rose to fame, but these days, with everybody having mobile phones with cameras, CCTV lining the city, and facial recognition being a gadget even normal people had access to? Yeah, Arthur understood what the vigilante meant. 

“I still don’t see how this is supposed to be connected to Merlin,” Arthur said.

The Magician didn’t answer immediately, but when he focused on Arthur again a moment later, he squared his shoulders, as if he had come to a difficult decision.

“I suppose you had to find out one way or another, might as well be today,” he sighed. “Arthur, come on, think, you can do it. If publishing that photo would lead to every camera in this city scanning for a face matching mine, what do you think would happen? I don’t spend all my time running around in a cape.”

 “Well, they’d identify you,” Arthur said, feeling stupid for saying the obvious. Even from the other side of the gap between the houses he could see how the Magician was rolling his eyes at that. 

Of course they’d identify the Magician, and that would mean that, like all the other superheros who’d suffered the same fate, he would either have to give up his day-job or risk being taken in and charged with vigilante justice. Still, how was that connected to making Merlin disap— … oh. Oh. No. NO. Surely… surely not. Right? There was no way Merlin…? 

Slowly, Arthur looked back at the Magician. The man suddenly seemed nervous. He was about Merlin’s height and built; how had he never noticed that before? Come to think of it, the only time he had ever seen Merlin and the Magician in the same place was on that stupid selfie Merlin had brought in earlier today. 

“Merlin?” Arthur breathed.

“Tadaa,” came the weak reply. That voice. How the hell had Arthur managed to convince himself that the voice that gave him goosebumps wasn’t the same that chirped an annoyingly bright 'good morning' at him every day? 

“Merlin, is that seriously, really you?” Arthur asked. 

 _Oh my God, I’ve kissed him, that was him, I’ve kissed Merlin, I’VE KISSED MERLIN_ , suddenly shot through Arthur’s head.

And, more importantly, Merlin. Had. Kissed. Back.

Merlin had kissed back. 

_Merlin had kissed back._

No wonder the idiot had been blushing and ignoring his way through the weeks that followed. 

“Merlin, you absolute idiot, get yourself over here!” Arthur bellowed. The Magician’s… no, Merlin’s shoulders slumped and he looked as if he was one moment away from bolting. “No, wait, sorry!” Arthur panicked. _Oh shit, he was going to have to use his words._ But well, fair’s fair, wasn’t it? “I know I say idiot a lot, but it doesn’t mean 'idiot', I don’t… I haven’t meant it to mean that for quite some time. I actually mean kind of quite… the opposite. I mean, not that I think you’re clever, but I mean… you’re _my_ idiot.”

There was a rush of wind and a rustle of fabric, and then the Magician was standing right next to Arthur, on his side of the gap. 

“So basically you’re saying you’re a dollophead who has no grasp of the English language,” Merlin’s voice quipped from behind the mask.

Arthur was very proud for not falling off the building in shock at suddenly having Merlin so close to him. He reached up automatically, wanting to touch, wanting to remove the mask, but he caught himself just in time. 

“May I?” he asked quietly, his voice shaking as much as his hands. 

Merlin nodded, and whispered a short spell. When Arthur’s hand came up again, Merlin’s face suddenly seemed much more solid, and Arthur could now actually see the mask, sharp, and not the permanently, weirdly out of focus thing that kept throwing all the cameras off. Merlin’s eyes were big behind the slim white mask, and Arthur’s heart clenched when he realised that they were wide with fear. Merlin took off his hat, and Arthur carefully slipped the mask off his face.

“Oh God, it really is you,” Arthur rushed out, and he felt his knees going weak and pulled Merlin into a hug. He let himself fall against Merlin, sink into him, and Merlin, as always, caught him. Arthur felt Merlin’s hands tremble against his back. 

“I’m s—“

“Don’t you dare say you’re sorry, Merlin, don’t you dare - what else were you supposed to do? _I’m_ sorry for being such an arse to you, not just today, but—“

“If I don’t get to assuage my guilt by saying sorry, you don’t get to, either. Although it is nice to hear that you’re sorry for being such a prat.”

Arthur could hear the smile in Merlin’s voice, and the hands against his back had stopped trembling. They would be ok. Arthur smiled. 

“Idiot.”

“Prat.”


End file.
